ICDP Services

The topics above are offered by ICDP's Operational Support Group (OSG), a small team of scientists, engineers and technicians to assist in project planning and management.

Data & Sample management

Acquisition and administration of field, lab, and storage data

Data and Sample Management for Scientific Drilling Projects must be a comprehensive service in the long run. The main target is to acquire all information about the technical and scientific works performed during the operational phase in the field and in the lab. Well-documented sample material gets prepared for permanent storage. The resulting output provides basic and validated data sets; a common reference indespensible when most of the science team members start their scientific work.

Contact

Downloads

Timeline

of a scientific drilling project

As one of the most important comprehensive services, data and sample management is a long-term task which covers the whole period of the expedition. Therefore data management deserves constant attention on behalf of the project management and the science team.

The period of the expedition starts with rig-up for the first hole, and ends with the completion of the operational report. During that time, most of the initial data are collected, such as monitoring data and reports of all parameters related to drilling operations, material recovered from the wellhole, initial measurements, descriptions and documentation of that material, down hole logging data, sampling, …

In most cases, not all of these tasks can be done on-site while drilling, because environmental conditions are often too harsh, and there is simply no space available. Thus, often the expedition is divided into several phases. Drilling operations can be separated from lab work by a long time, because of the complex logistics of transferring the sample material from the sites to the target lab, as shown above by the yellow cone in the figure.